2020 Census and Redistricting Thread: Wisconsin

[lfromnj]

So with regards to the legislature, the Rs get a fairly brutal gerrymander of the FRV, get to keep chopping at the bits in Eastern Dane, and keep Kenosha/Racine together instead of giving each a seat. Eau Claire seems gerrymandered and it definetely is awful on COI grounds but it actually doesn't help the GOP much. Population changes will make an exurban Dane/Driftless seat more competitve.

However the test for "least change" will be most seen if the GOP court decides to fix the dummymander in Milwaukee for the GOP or keeps it least change. 8 and 5 both voted for Biden. However 4 and 6 have a lot of population loss and they could theoretically eat at the most dem parts of 5 and 8 and let them both become more GOP.

To grow 4 and 6, I would think they would go where the could at least try gain the most African American voters possible, which would probably mean grabbing the rest of Glendale and taking Brown Deer, maybe also a piece of 7 or a bit of northwest 3. Only piece of 5 I could see 4/6 taking is that sliver north of Wauwatosa that's in Milwaukee. The rest of the district is pretty white.

The other question is population equality as well. Is the goal to get it back to sub 500 deviation or will anything within 5% work?  If its back to sub 500 then that could help the GOP there.(One district has 600 deviation but the rest are very close) Going for strict population deviation will help Democrats in Dane with senate district 13 but hurt in Milwaukee. Vice versa for 5% rule.

Also about "pure least change" the "best" way to do that is to probably push into the 5th senate so it can push West and push 33 West so 13 gets pushed further into Dane as the Dane senate districts shrink.

Other than that the legislative districts shouldn't change too much. The Appleton district is currently Trump +1.9 but has to lose around 6k people moving it to Trump +0.5  if it takes the R parts of the district.  25 might eat into 10 along with 12 eating a Dem leaning reservation from 25 which hurts a bit but the district was flipping anyway.

[Torie]

So with regards to the legislature, the Rs get a fairly brutal gerrymander of the FRV, get to keep chopping at the bits in Eastern Dane, and keep Kenosha/Racine together instead of giving each a seat. Eau Claire seems gerrymandered and it definetely is awful on COI grounds but it actually doesn't help the GOP much. Population changes will make an exurban Dane/Driftless seat more competitve.

However the test for "least change" will be most seen if the GOP court decides to fix the dummymander in Milwaukee for the GOP or keeps it least change. 8 and 5 both voted for Biden. However 4 and 6 have a lot of population loss and they could theoretically eat at the most dem parts of 5 and 8 and let them both become more GOP.

To grow 4 and 6, I would think they would go where the could at least try gain the most African American voters possible, which would probably mean grabbing the rest of Glendale and taking Brown Deer, maybe also a piece of 7 or a bit of northwest 3. Only piece of 5 I could see 4/6 taking is that sliver north of Wauwatosa that's in Milwaukee. The rest of the district is pretty white.

The other question is population equality as well. Is the goal to get it back to sub 500 deviation or will anything within 5% work?  If its back to sub 500 then that could help the GOP there.(One district has 600 deviation but the rest are very close) Going for strict population deviation will help Democrats in Dane with senate district 13 but hurt in Milwaukee. Vice versa for 5% rule.

Also about "pure least change" the "best" way to do that is to probably push into the 5th senate so it can push West and push 33 West so 13 gets pushed further into Dane as the Dane senate districts shrink.

Other than that the legislative districts shouldn't change too much. The Appleton district is currently Trump +1.9 but has to lose around 6k people moving it to Trump +0.5  if it takes the R parts of the district.  25 might eat into 10 along with 12 eating a Dem leaning reservation from 25 which hurts a bit but the district was flipping anyway.

Did the existing map have population inequalities when drawn? If not, I don't think the court is going there. If it did, then assuming Wisconsin law is silent on the subject, the Wisconsin court might only change the lines when the existing deviation exceeds the 10% deviation that is the max SCOTUS allows, thus making the existing map illegal.

[lfromnj]

So with regards to the legislature, the Rs get a fairly brutal gerrymander of the FRV, get to keep chopping at the bits in Eastern Dane, and keep Kenosha/Racine together instead of giving each a seat. Eau Claire seems gerrymandered and it definetely is awful on COI grounds but it actually doesn't help the GOP much. Population changes will make an exurban Dane/Driftless seat more competitve.

However the test for "least change" will be most seen if the GOP court decides to fix the dummymander in Milwaukee for the GOP or keeps it least change. 8 and 5 both voted for Biden. However 4 and 6 have a lot of population loss and they could theoretically eat at the most dem parts of 5 and 8 and let them both become more GOP.

To grow 4 and 6, I would think they would go where the could at least try gain the most African American voters possible, which would probably mean grabbing the rest of Glendale and taking Brown Deer, maybe also a piece of 7 or a bit of northwest 3. Only piece of 5 I could see 4/6 taking is that sliver north of Wauwatosa that's in Milwaukee. The rest of the district is pretty white.

The other question is population equality as well. Is the goal to get it back to sub 500 deviation or will anything within 5% work?  If its back to sub 500 then that could help the GOP there.(One district has 600 deviation but the rest are very close) Going for strict population deviation will help Democrats in Dane with senate district 13 but hurt in Milwaukee. Vice versa for 5% rule.

Also about "pure least change" the "best" way to do that is to probably push into the 5th senate so it can push West and push 33 West so 13 gets pushed further into Dane as the Dane senate districts shrink.

Other than that the legislative districts shouldn't change too much. The Appleton district is currently Trump +1.9 but has to lose around 6k people moving it to Trump +0.5  if it takes the R parts of the district.  25 might eat into 10 along with 12 eating a Dem leaning reservation from 25 which hurts a bit but the district was flipping anyway.

Did the existing map have population inequalities when drawn? If not, I don't think the court is going there. If it did, then assuming Wisconsin law is silent on the subject, the Wisconsin court might only change the lines when the existing deviation exceeds the 10% deviation that is the max SCOTUS allows, thus making the existing map illegal.

There is no population inequalities beyond what a precinct would fill. The most deviation from 0 is 600 people. I assume the goal will once again be to target this number or lower.

[lfromnj]

Honestly the most similar district to WI01 is probably CT05, both are mildly gerrymandered to be more partisan then they should be due to leftover demands  from 2000 court redistricting.




This was the pre 2002 map with 9 districts. As Wisconsin lost a district and North Milwaukee had to expand southwards it was obviously the south Milwaukee Waukesha seat that had to be cut. Obviously a large portion of the population could be taken care of due to the milwaukee population loss but WI01 and WI05 still had to eat up the remainder. Dave Obey was the one who worked the compromise with the courts to satisfy all incumbents. The WI GOP did mostly keep the shape of the new map besides shoring up WI07 with WI03 and trading Dodge/Ozaukee county between WI05 and WI06.  Doing the Dodge trade did make WI06 a McCain district although I think the main purpose was less to due with partisanship and maybe just wanting to increase WOW representation.  The WI03 and WI07 now slightly helps Dems although putting back St Croix county wouldn't really matter as previously it used to be very red compared to the surrounding area but now it is merely as red as any surrounding rural.This is actually quite similar to what will likely happen with CT with a least change map as  CT05 should not be taking in Hartford suburbs while the Hartford district takes in random rurals.

[Torie]

So with regards to the legislature, the Rs get a fairly brutal gerrymander of the FRV, get to keep chopping at the bits in Eastern Dane, and keep Kenosha/Racine together instead of giving each a seat. Eau Claire seems gerrymandered and it definetely is awful on COI grounds but it actually doesn't help the GOP much. Population changes will make an exurban Dane/Driftless seat more competitve.

However the test for "least change" will be most seen if the GOP court decides to fix the dummymander in Milwaukee for the GOP or keeps it least change. 8 and 5 both voted for Biden. However 4 and 6 have a lot of population loss and they could theoretically eat at the most dem parts of 5 and 8 and let them both become more GOP.

To grow 4 and 6, I would think they would go where the could at least try gain the most African American voters possible, which would probably mean grabbing the rest of Glendale and taking Brown Deer, maybe also a piece of 7 or a bit of northwest 3. Only piece of 5 I could see 4/6 taking is that sliver north of Wauwatosa that's in Milwaukee. The rest of the district is pretty white.

The other question is population equality as well. Is the goal to get it back to sub 500 deviation or will anything within 5% work?  If its back to sub 500 then that could help the GOP there.(One district has 600 deviation but the rest are very close) Going for strict population deviation will help Democrats in Dane with senate district 13 but hurt in Milwaukee. Vice versa for 5% rule.

Also about "pure least change" the "best" way to do that is to probably push into the 5th senate so it can push West and push 33 West so 13 gets pushed further into Dane as the Dane senate districts shrink.

Other than that the legislative districts shouldn't change too much. The Appleton district is currently Trump +1.9 but has to lose around 6k people moving it to Trump +0.5  if it takes the R parts of the district.  25 might eat into 10 along with 12 eating a Dem leaning reservation from 25 which hurts a bit but the district was flipping anyway.

Did the existing map have population inequalities when drawn? If not, I don't think the court is going there. If it did, then assuming Wisconsin law is silent on the subject, the Wisconsin court might only change the lines when the existing deviation exceeds the 10% deviation that is the max SCOTUS allows, thus making the existing map illegal.

There is no population inequalities beyond what a precinct would fill. The most deviation from 0 is 600 people. I assume the goal will once again be to target this number or lower.

Yes, and Wisconsin might have some law on the subject.

And voila! What would you people do without me?  

https://law.justia.com/constitution/wisconsin/article-iv/section-3/

Wait a minute! Actually the existing map when passed pushed up close to the 10% deviation limit. So the court is not going to move the lines except where necessary to stay within the 10% parameter, and where the lines move, it will be done in a way to minimize the size of the county or municipal chop. Probably it should be turned over to a black box to do the job. Humans will just F it up.

https://davesredistricting.org/maps#viewmap::f02103cd-91fa-43f8-91cc-186e4c0cccb7


I lost my frigging mind. Wrong state. What the guy said from the state where the garbage meets the sea, which at this very moment is graced by my presence, was precisely true. I need a conservator ASAP.

[lfromnj]

Yes, and Wisconsin might have some law on the subject.

And voila! What would you people do without me?  

https://law.justia.com/constitution/wisconsin/article-iv/section-3/

Wait a minute! Actually the existing map when passed pushed up close to the 10% deviation limit. So the court is not going to move the lines except where necessary to stay within the 10% parameter, and where the lines move, it will be done in a way to minimize the size of the county or municipal chop. Probably it should be turned over to a black box to do the job. Humans will just F it up.

https://davesredistricting.org/maps#viewmap::f02103cd-91fa-43f8-91cc-186e4c0cccb7


I lost my frigging mind. Wrong state. What the guy said from the state where the garbage meets the sea, which at this very moment is graced by my presence, was precisely true. I need a conservator ASAP.

Sure just send your Social security and credit card info on atlas dm.

[Torie]

Man, Wisconsin is a stable state. I did a least change map for the State House, and almost nothing changed anywhere at all. The Pubs lost a seat or two, in the relatively fast growing Madison zone, and the Dems returned the favor by appearing to have lost a seat in the slower growing Milwaukee zone. The cores of almost all the seats are preserved, as well as their partisan complexion. All Hispanic and black districts were also preserved. Plus ca change, plus c’est le meme chose.



PS: This is my first State House map ever. Drawing the damn things is the ultimate act of self abuse.Never again!

[Biden his time]

-SNIP-

Wisconsin is interesting because the rural areas also somewhat grew, as opposed to what happened in Texas or Kansas.

This prevents very many Democratic gains from urbanization.

[Torie]

-SNIP-

Wisconsin is interesting because the rural areas also somewhat grew, as opposed to what happened in Texas or Kansas.

This prevents very many Democratic gains from urbanization.

Yeah, the only real population dynamism relatively speaking was that Madison metro area sucked about 80% of a district into its jaws, converting the 42nd district from a safe Pub place to heavily Dem. Other than that, in general the lines just needed to be tweaked, although there was a bit more action in Milwaukee County, where the VRA was in play, and about half a district needed to poke its nose into Waukesha County. But that noise quickly faded away.



https://davesredistricting.org/join/b6707b73-4920-4c29-97bb-a0a256056d95

[I spent the winter writing songs about getting better]

I tried drawing a truly fair map without regards to current lines or partisanship awhile ago...and yep it ended up 6-2 anyway. Even the Evers/Walker numbers were still 6-2, although Evers came within a point of winning the purple district. So while it sucks facts are the current alignment of Wisconsin basically locks into a 6-2 map:



Letting the gerrymandered State Legislature maps remain is a lot worse though, although I do wonder how a fair map would differ much in partisan turnout, I'll probably draw one sometime soon, can't see one with a D majority in either chamber regardless. The current gerrymander is kind of weird, a lot of the weird splits are seemingly more just out of spite than partisan gains, for example the split in State Senate seats around Eau Claire is pretty weird but the net result is still just a single D seat in the region which is exactly what would happen on a pure community of interest drawn map. Some of the splits remind me of in my opinion the most perplexing State Senate seat in the country, that one in Upstate New York that links downtown Syracuse to a bunch of random rural areas while bypassing most of the suburbs for no real reason whatsoever: it's still a Safe D seat and the Republicans still hold the surrounding areas anyway. The way the urban areas in northeast Wisconsin are drawn in the State Senate is a shameless gerrymander and greatly assists them though.

EDIT: turns out I'm now wrong about Syracuse, Democrats did pick up the other main seat in the region in a special election last year. So they now have two seats from the region instead of just one...I highly doubt that was the intent though with how that map was initially drawn, making me still wonder what the purpose is. (Does mean Democrats will likely more or less keep the current boundaries in the new map though.)

[Torie]

Least change in Wisconsin for CD's, means almost no change at all. And the amazing thing is that by WI-03 losing a county split by filling the county in by about a couple of thousand people, it becomes 5 votes more Dem as to Biden voters. So the Court can duck WI-03 entirely, and then move a few people around elsewhere that don't matter at all from a partisan perspective.

Another beautiful thing is that WI-03 as drawn by the Pubs was a Dem sink to move WI-07 into their column at the margins. Now that former Dem sink again at the margins, has hoisted the Pubs on their own petard. The Court was wise to duck the whole affair. Wisconsin is not that gerrymandered a state in any event, as others have noted.

https://davesredistricting.org/join/4e917a69-be74-4fd3-83aa-a1b7e18c533f

[I spent the winter writing songs about getting better]

BTW does anyone have a count of how many Biden/Trump and Evers/Walker districts there are in that map Evers tweeted earlier?

[I spent the winter writing songs about getting better]

So I drew a map ignoring partisanship and focusing only on CoI. (Senate map isn't complete yet but should be pretty easy since it's just combining three Assembly districts each into one Senate map.)

It's still pretty bad for the Democrats. PlanScore gives it a 9.7% R Efficiency Gap and predicts the Democrats would only win 37% of the seats with 49% of the vote.

There are 45 solid Trump districts, 37 solid Biden districts, and 22 "competitive" ones, DRA defines "competitive" as in the 45-55% range so a lot are still pretty solid. It also has 46 solid Walker districts, 32 solid Evers districts and 21 "competitive". I'm a bit shocked because I would've expected Evers' coalition to be better for Democrats.

There are three Evers/Trump districts (24, 27 and 58) and three Walker/Biden districts (47, 53 and 87.) So the three Evers/Trump are in the driftless and two mostly rural seats north of Madison, and the Walker/Biden ones are in a suburban area southeast of Appleton, Sheboygan and the surrounding areas and one right south of Milwaukee.

Here's the Trump/Biden map:

[S019]

So I drew a map ignoring partisanship and focusing only on CoI. (Senate map isn't complete yet but should be pretty easy since it's just combining three Assembly districts each into one Senate map.)

It's still pretty bad for the Democrats. PlanScore gives it a 9.7% R Efficiency Gap and predicts the Democrats would only win 37% of the seats with 49% of the vote.

There are 45 solid Trump districts, 37 solid Biden districts, and 22 "competitive" ones, DRA defines "competitive" as in the 45-55% range so a lot are still pretty solid. It also has 46 solid Walker districts, 32 solid Evers districts and 21 "competitive". I'm a bit shocked because I would've expected Evers' coalition to be better for Democrats.

There are three Evers/Trump districts (24, 27 and 58) and three Walker/Biden districts (47, 53 and 87.) So the three Evers/Trump are in the driftless and two mostly rural seats north of Madison, and the Walker/Biden ones are in a suburban area southeast of Appleton, Sheboygan and the surrounding areas and one right south of Milwaukee.

Here's the Trump/Biden map:

Do you have a link to the map? How many seats did Biden win total?

[I spent the winter writing songs about getting better]

So I drew a map ignoring partisanship and focusing only on CoI. (Senate map isn't complete yet but should be pretty easy since it's just combining three Assembly districts each into one Senate map.)

It's still pretty bad for the Democrats. PlanScore gives it a 9.7% R Efficiency Gap and predicts the Democrats would only win 37% of the seats with 49% of the vote.

There are 45 solid Trump districts, 37 solid Biden districts, and 22 "competitive" ones, DRA defines "competitive" as in the 45-55% range so a lot are still pretty solid. It also has 46 solid Walker districts, 32 solid Evers districts and 21 "competitive". I'm a bit shocked because I would've expected Evers' coalition to be better for Democrats.

There are three Evers/Trump districts (24, 27 and 58) and three Walker/Biden districts (47, 53 and 87.) So the three Evers/Trump are in the driftless and two mostly rural seats north of Madison, and the Walker/Biden ones are in a suburban area southeast of Appleton, Sheboygan and the surrounding areas and one right south of Milwaukee.

Here's the Trump/Biden map:

Do you have a link to the map? How many seats did Biden win total?

https://davesredistricting.org/join/cd542c43-a23f-45d3-805d-36fb61bed0b6

I count 41 Biden seats.

[President Punxsutawney Phil]

Nice work!

[lfromnj]

So I drew a map ignoring partisanship and focusing only on CoI. (Senate map isn't complete yet but should be pretty easy since it's just combining three Assembly districts each into one Senate map.)

It's still pretty bad for the Democrats. PlanScore gives it a 9.7% R Efficiency Gap and predicts the Democrats would only win 37% of the seats with 49% of the vote.

There are 45 solid Trump districts, 37 solid Biden districts, and 22 "competitive" ones, DRA defines "competitive" as in the 45-55% range so a lot are still pretty solid. It also has 46 solid Walker districts, 32 solid Evers districts and 21 "competitive". I'm a bit shocked because I would've expected Evers' coalition to be better for Democrats.

There are three Evers/Trump districts (24, 27 and 58) and three Walker/Biden districts (47, 53 and 87.) So the three Evers/Trump are in the driftless and two mostly rural seats north of Madison, and the Walker/Biden ones are in a suburban area southeast of Appleton, Sheboygan and the surrounding areas and one right south of Milwaukee.

Redraw Racine and Kenosha . If you give each its own senate seat and draw 3 layering assembly seats you should get 4 biden seats no?

[Stuart98]

I tried drawing a proportionally partisan WI state legislative map.

State Senate:

Pres 2020:
18-15 Biden, 16-17 Evers, 21-12 Baldwin

State House:
Pres 2020:

51-48 Biden, 47-52 Evers, 60-39 Baldwin.

[I spent the winter writing songs about getting better]

And here's the Senate of my above map. Unsurprisingly it's even worse because a few Democratic enclaves get drowned by the surrounding areas. Even Eau Claire is in a Trump district, although it's also the only Trump/Evers seat on this map (there's also a Biden/Walker seat, just south of Milwaukee, and voted for Walker by the tiniest of margins.) Biden and thus Evers only won 13 seats here.

Funnily enough the current gerrymander that puts Kenosha and Racine together might help Democrats, Racine is difficult to get in a D Senate seat because the surrounding areas are so super-Republican and the Kenosha seat voted for Biden by the slimmest of margins with 0.1%, it's the closest on the map. So the current vote sink at least guarantees a Democratic seat, while splitting them means there could be zero. Also noteworthy is that Kenosha was the only area in eastern Wisconsin where Evers outran Biden: he won that seat by 5 points while Biden did by a tenth of a point...probably settling the question to if the riots hurt Biden there.

[lfromnj]

Sorta Least change based from 2002 map.

WI03 is Trump +5.5 and WI01 is Trump +5.9.

Everything else is safe.

[Born to Slay. Forced to Work.]

Wisconsin is 100% the worst state geographically for democrats

[Skill and Chance]

Wisconsin is 100% the worst state geographically for democrats

Illinois is up there, but it's covered up by how well they do statewide.  IL Dems are toast if they ever lose control of redistricting.  MN used to be Dem-favorable geography but is rapidly deteriorating as they lose everything more than an hour away from MPLS.   

[Born to Slay. Forced to Work.]

Wisconsin is 100% the worst state geographically for democrats

Illinois is up there, but it's covered up by how well they do statewide.  IL Dems are toast if they ever lose control of redistricting.  MN used to be Dem-favorable geography but is rapidly deteriorating as they lose everything more than an hour away from MPLS.   

Eh, Chicago 100% makes Illinois a blue state, but it also is the vast majority of the population. Out side Chicagoland is only 5-7 congressional seats of the 16 the state has. Dane and Milwaukee are each about 1 seat, but also some of the bluest regions in the country

[Gass3268]

https://twitter.com/byjackkelly/status/1471183568751808512?s=20

Governor Evers' least change maps:

Assembly
Senate
Congress

[Brittain33]

Link to Evers proposed congressional map

https://www.google.com/maps/d/viewer?usp=sharing&mid=10H4O7oyvGSgks0eS2-nppEzh-L4d1Vmk